That spacey backdrop is ‘cos we had a screen to project a film on – Isabel’s Titus Androidicus: A Robot Romance, a sometimes funny, sometimes creepy short film about robot-human love.

Claire touches objects at lesiure; they freeze,forever. Michele’s village people tried to cook and eat a robot. He spat blood schooling himself on English grammar. Troy hummed in the static of his inner television, wondered if God sees him picking clumps of toilet paper out of his ass. Charlie updated Gil Scott-Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Rufo heard a brrr like the music of history: a radio tuned to nothing. He eats and eats but still stays thin. The floorboards moan. If the song’s right, it’ll cut through you like a knife, said Yanique. Isabel read an ode to the actor playing the robot in her film. Bruce lost a thumb but is not especially missing it, in The Butcher of Belleville, a half true story. Sherri asked Who you gonna be? You just do you, I’m gonna be me. Tia answered: who are you? The sand and water of this land. Claire told about a boy: stinging nettles rub his thighs. And Bukowski avoided a clam hammering job. A few other people did other stuff. And I ended up addicted to words.And why not?As good as any other thingWhat do you do, you who are not so? With your hours and your days burning your hands, watching your every breath, lurking inside?I’m addicted to wordsThat hum with static, crackle with lightning sparks,Glow AutomaticTheir magnetic force suffuses everything holyTransient as a rainbow on a skin of oilThey boil, turn, burn, respond to a caress, their dark power nothing less than what makes the world go roundWe are what the words speakWe are what the words saidSaid I.